creme de la creme

It's already known that all our behavioural patterns could be traced to either the genetic make-up or the environment in which we grew up. If you didn't know this, ask any student of Sociology 101 and s/he will be happy to help you with a healthy serving of an agonizingly boring essay of "heredity vs. environment". My point is not with Sociology being boring or in asking why a common-sensical topic must be boring, but that, I hate apples and I know how to trace this hatred to. You see, when I was small, I was given a boiled egg, an apple and a sandesh everyday for "tiffin". The familiarity with the apple was too much to take after 2-3 years, which also was the same for sandesh, though I still love eggs, to death, still now. But later, I did ask my parents and also my grandparents (with whom I had spent my childhood) on why the affinity with the apple? And yes, the answer had been rather simple--an apple a day and yadi yadi ya...

Which always made me wonder--how come protectors of health are always so unhealthy?

I mean the doctors.

Leave aside the lovely book by Eric Segal, (I love "Barney"), but have you ever seen a handsome doctor? Okay, maybe one. Probably you oversaw (in the manner of overhear), by a friend of a friend who happened to sprain her ankle and saw an intern bandaging her's and so on. Now for those politically correct and picky people who might come forward to question the equation: handsome = healthy, let me ask you in converse: have you ever seen an unhealthy looking but handsome person? Male/Female? Someone whom you do not love and is not related to you (that is, after shedding off your love-filters).

Come to face it, anybody who is healthy, at least looks cheerful; and though the definition of "good looking" or handsome might be dubious and differing for people, one should be healthy in one's best interest--it's economical, it looks better (fat never looked good), and it makes sure that you are there for the people you love. And more often than not, it is in one's own hands. It is possible to let yourself slip away for a year or two or even three or four but it's never impossible to get back on track, banish fat and be healthy.

Appreciatively, Indians and specifically Bengalis, believe in the least input and whatever output. Which translated into activities, means getting an apple to invest in less medical bills, finding the "common questions and suggestions" before each examination, bringing taste into food by deep frying almost everything and killing all nutrients, and of course, not investing in any kind of exercise after 7:30 am. Make no mistake, Bengalis do become involved in some form of physical activity. You'll find 90% of all Bengalis, especially in their middle ages doing the "morning walk". Females generally do the "evening walk" as it ensures they receive the daily staple of community events through a single activity.

In recent years, there has been laughing clubs, where ladies go and do like this, and laugh, in an attempt to come out of blood pressure and arthiritis which caught up on them since they were 35.

In fact, this is accepted like Himesh Reshamiyya was. People knew he was nasal (and nasal-nasal..in a bad way), yet people loved him and embraced him in the name of music. Nobody would refuse to accept his brand of music as "music". Same goes for our genetical brothers/sisters. They accept that with 35 or with 40, there would be diabetes, blood pressure, cholestorol, gout and what not crouching into their lives, following dollops of fat and the happily growing mid-section ever after. The women picturized in this recent photo published in ABP are all in their middle ages, and we might find a mother, an aunt in them.

And we call Americans "obese".

If we just remove the familiarity filter for a while, we could see that rarely do we see an ideal or close to a healthy body in India or Calcutta (for that matter) these days. Men are thin, with a potbelly (that is, they are skinny fat) and women are .....already described. The only exception would be the village men and women, who might not have a lot of lean mass, but who will most certainly not have such high body fat percentage.

Like accepting this hideous figure of Rituparna Sengupta, with 45% body fat and 15% lean mass (do you even see a calf muscle definition? leave alone other parts....) as an apt one to be in showbiz, whenever we see people or crowd or anybody in their 35s and above, we expect and accept them to be nurturing a lot of moving, soft, floury, fat. Just pick any picture of a crowd in India, any group of people in India, (barring the village people) and you will know what I mean.










This is more so when we see the economical elite or even the occupational elite like doctors, lawyers and oh yes, the police!


Imagine these men in a pair of jeans and a normal T-shirt.









When the average population of a country is out-of-shape and lead an unhealthy lifestyle (which is manifest in South Asians being the toppers in dying from heart disease and diabetes), looks unhealthy and aged than their actual age, we find comfort in the degree of obesity of first world countries. What about the frequency of obesity in us?
And can anybody please tell me: why should an ethnic group accept this bodily image of bloated faces and potbellied bodies as indicators of affluence?

And yet, though we obviously do not think about it, at least as regards ourselves, we do talk about it. Visit your neighbourhood or old friends after a gap of some period of time (1 year, 6 months or so) and the second sentence would be "You've gained weight!!" (spoken in a tone which reads as if you invited all the weight so that your eyes would sparkle in glee when you hear this comment)

The other alternative is: "You've lost weight!!(-->this being followed by how will you get married and why did you lose it and that you should eat butter!!)

If you manage to stay the same, they will comment "You are just the same!! Why haven't you gained weight?"

So that you do not end up as an outlier and remain more clustered towards the mean weight (mean = measure of central tendency, I mean, not the attitude...).

In fact, secretly, people wish that everybody remains the same. This is also reflected in our culture-vulture. Your gym-going habit will obviously be scorned at in Bengali Band songs, and in movies, the "bilet-ferot" weird character will almost be shown to be going for a jog in the morning, amidst dingy gullies and smoky chullahs. When the rest of the world is trying to survive (which is, feeding the stomach), it is almost a sin to look after yourself.

More so, if you are placed high up in the occupational hierarchy. Affluence in wealth must speak in affluence in cream, disregarding the "health is wealth" adage and turning a blind eye towards how Indians are perceived and represented in cartoons such as Mowgli, (yeah, even...), Tintin and the usual soap-s where the chief bahu protagonist aims to gain a stronghold among the in-laws by throwing around her weight,..... both metaphorically and realistically.

So.... till we gain our vision and do something, enjoy these random pics (None of them was taken by me).

And by the way, I've no idea whether this is due to heredity or due to environment. Food for thought and also for some research proposals.